The Passenger (24 page)

Their assortment of DVDs had no common denominator, nor were they in any discernible order.
Dr. Strangelove
sat next to
Better Off Dead
, followed by
The Philadelphia Story
, then
Die Hard
,
On the Waterfront
,
What About Bob?
,
Apocalypse Now
,
The Hangover
. The rest of the collection of fifty or so titles followed a similar lack of cohesion. I sat in front of that shelf for about an hour, trying to choose a film, until I realized that I had nothing but time. I picked the first disc on the top shelf on the left—
Dr. Strangelove—
put it in the DVD player, sat down on the couch, and watched.

Three days and twenty films later, I had barely moved from that very spot.

September 3, 2015

To: Jo

From: Ryan

I know you're on the run. How are you getting by? If you need money, don't ask him again. I have some put aside for you. I always had it. I never mentioned it to you, because I thought it would make you angry. You can have it any time you want it.

Maybe you think it's too dangerous to write back. I'm careful. I go someplace to do this and I've never told anyone.

I think you need help now. Let me help you.

R

September 16, 2015

To: Jo

From: Ryan

Look, there's this writer coming around asking questions, I think because of the ten-year anniversary. She says she's writing a whole book on the murder of Melinda Lyons and the disappearance of Nora Glass. She came to see me. I put her off. But she's renting one of Mrs. Carlisle's extra rooms. It looks like she's staying for a while.

Here's another thing, something that might make you happy. Edie left Logan. It's over. If you're still angry about that, about what I didn't do, maybe you can let it go and write me back.

Yours, R

T
HE
television in the Frazier home held me captive. I found myself incapable of doing much other than sitting on a couch and staring at a screen. By the fourth day, after I'd eaten plain oatmeal for ten meals straight, I thought I ought to venture out and retrieve my belongings from Camp Wildacre.

I left my car half a mile away tucked under an evergreen. I wore one of Gina's dresses and dotted my lips with a cherry gloss I found in the medicine cabinet. I didn't look right, I knew that, but I didn't look anything like the woman who'd had that run-in with the hunters. I could have just as easily been a worn-out mother looking for a sleepaway camp for her son or daughter. I found the camp just as I had left it, with the addition of the broken fender in the creek from the Ford truck I had crashed. The chain-link fence remained unsecured, and the hunters hadn't even bothered to fill in my Apache foot traps for the next unfortunate pair of legs to stroll in that direction.

I checked my bunk. Muddy footprints covered the floor, but they hadn't noticed all of my supplies tucked away in the cubbyhole. Perhaps it had never occurred to the hunters that I had been settling in for a long stretch. I shoved my clothes and food into my backpack and gathered my camping gear. I refilled the foot traps with the same soil I had removed from them. I lugged all of my gear back to my Jeep, sweating hard in that cold fall air.

As I drove away, I already felt nostalgic. Even before I knew what was to come, I knew that Wildacre was the last place I'd find real freedom. Something was about to change. As the weather turned and my options narrowed, I might find moments of feeling safe, secure. But in general my life was like standing under a showerhead with the water heater on the fritz—ice-cold to scorching in two seconds flat.

I went to the store and purchased cheap produce, bread, peanut butter, and whatever was on special. I tried hard not to think about my dwindling savings. I tried not to think about the kind of work that the likes of me could get in this town, or any town in which I might remain anonymous. I wouldn't need much to survive in the way I was planning, but I'd need
something
.

I thought about calling Ryan, but pride deterred me for the time being. It was easier to keep my distance. Besides, I still had $228 to my name and a roof over my head.

O
N MY WAY
home from the store, I drove past the no-name bar. I felt like company even if I wasn't planning to talk to anyone. It was happy hour and drafts were only two dollars. The bartender nodded, as if he remembered me from last time. I decided this ought to be my last visit.

Someone had left a newspaper on the bar. I picked it up to avoid conversation.

“What'll it be?” he asked.

“Draft,” I said.

As he poured my pint, he decided to make friendly conversation. I wondered if I'd ever be able to engage in small talk without feeling like there was a lit stick of dynamite in the vicinity.

“You a local?” he said.

“Just passing through.”

“From where?”

“Everywhere.”

He looked at me, right in the eye, and then averted his gaze as if something about me troubled him. He served me without making eye contact again. I wondered what he saw. Would I see it if I looked in the mirror? Improbable thoughts bubbled to the surface. Could he see who I was, what this life had made of me? I hadn't let myself linger much in the past. The best part of running full speed is not having time to look back. But even if I didn't think about it much, I had felt a seismic internal shift after I had killed Jack Reed.

If I had to do it over again, I probably would. But I would do it knowing that the person I used to be, the person I dreamed of returning to, was completely gone. It wasn't as simpleminded as a shift from good to bad. I wasn't evil. But some kind of disease was spreading in my gut, and eventually it would take over my entire body. I hadn't yet realized anyone could see it from the outside.

“Did you hear about Earl?” a customer with a handlebar mustache asked the owner.

“No. What?”

“Got caught in some kind of animal trap at Camp Wildacre.”

“What was he doing there?”

“Hunting with Gary and Lou and I think Mike.”

“Who set the trap?” the bartender asked.

“They say a teenage boy, probably a runaway, had set up camp there. When Earl got caught, the kid made a run for it. They got a partial license plate number, but Mike doesn't want to call it in because you ain't supposed to be hunting at Wildacre.”

“Do they think the kid set the trap?” the bartender asked.

“That's what Gary figures. He might be one of those paranoid kids, the kind that blow up schools.”

“Sounds like he just set a trap,” said the bartender. “Maybe he was hoping for some venison for supper.”

“Who the hell knows? Kids today.”

My Jeep was parked outside, with the partial license plate right on display and dotted with bullet craters. I didn't think I looked like a teenage boy up close, but I finished my beer and got out of there.

As I drove back to the Frazier home, I pulled onto the shoulder of the road a couple of times to let cars pass me by, even slow ones hauling tractors. There wasn't a single witness as my car pulled into the private drive of my secret home.

A
FTER TWO
and a half weeks of keeping house in the Frazier cottage, I'd come to feel as if I knew them, knew the whole family. Subtle clues were strewn about—organic cleaning supplies, the denuded garden beds in the backyard, and of course their incoherent movie collection. A woodshed stood behind the house. It took me five hours to find the key for the padlock. It was a small art studio where Mr. or Mrs. Frazier painted amateur landscapes. They weren't half-bad to my eye, but what I found intriguing was that none of them had been hung inside the house. There was humility to that, which I respected. Behind a stack of paintings I found an aborted attempt at a portrait of Toby.

I went to the library one day and searched “Toby Frazier suicide.” I read an article in his college paper about his death. Friends and family described Toby as a reserved but kindhearted young man. Sensitive. His suicide happened on the heels of a breakup with a girl. She was unnamed. He was survived by his fraternal twin brother, Thomas, a Yale sophomore, and his parents, Gina, a math teacher in Manhattan, and Leonard Frazier, an investment banker.

That was the last time I looked into the private lives of the Fraziers. I left the rest of the letters unopened in their box, although I felt them calling to me every night.

Sometimes I thought I could feel the sadness in the house, as if I knew the Fraziers personally. After two and a half weeks of living in their home, I no longer felt like an intruder. I was simply a houseguest staying for an indeterminate period of time. I treated the home with respect. I washed dishes after every meal, dusted on occasion. Washed the floors and cleaned the bathroom at least once a week. I even scrubbed down the windows, which I was fairly certain they would notice once they returned. But it seemed like the right thing to do.

As with anything, I adjusted. I'd adjusted to being on the run; I'd adjusted to a new name, and another new name; I'd adjusted to being a liar; I'd adjusted to being a thief; I'd even adjusted to being a murderer. It wasn't that hard to adjust to a new home. I had even begun sleeping through the night. I was sleeping as if this life I led was perfectly ordinary. I was Sonia Lubovich, houseguest of Gina and Len Frazier, until I woke up one night and I was someone else.

H
ELLO?
Hello? Is anybody in here? Hello?”

I didn't wake as the car traveled up the winding driveway; the Prius might have stirred some gravel, but the engine was as quiet as a mouse. I didn't wake when she put the key in the lock; I didn't wake when she quietly shut the door behind her. But when her foot hit the floorboard in the entryway, I shot straight up in bed, adrenaline pumping too fast for my lungs to catch up.

The bathroom had a window without a screen. If I ran right then and crawled outside, she wouldn't see me. My bag with my wallet and cash was at the foot of the bed, but the keys to my Jeep sat on the desk in the front hallway. I wouldn't make it far on foot, and I was at least ten miles from any form of civilization.

“Hello?” she said again.

“Hello?” I said.

I was still working on the next thing I would say when Gina Frazier entered the bedroom. She resembled her photo in so many ways—the same practical haircut, the strong bones of her face, the sturdy physique—and yet she also looked like someone else. Her eyes had deep pools under them. In the dim glow of moonlight, she looked haunted. For a brief moment I found her terrifying.

“Paige, is that you?”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

She stepped closer, her eyes adjusting to the dark, trying to make me out in the dim light. She wasn't afraid. She knew me, or thought she knew me.

“I thought you were coming next week,” she said.

“No. This week.”

“Did you get all of your things?” Gina asked.

“I think so. Thank you. Should I go?”

“It's late, Paige. Where will you go?”

“A motel. Anywhere,” I said.

“It's fine,” Gina said coldly. “You can stay the night.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Frazier.”

“
Mrs. Frazier?
Really?”

“Gina,” I said hesitantly as I crawled out of bed. “I'll take the couch. You sleep here.”

“That's very kind of you,” she said unkindly. “But I'm not quite ready for bed. I'm going to make some tea,” Gina said, leaving the bedroom.

I followed Gina into the kitchen and living area, where she turned on the kettle. She wrapped her coat tightly around her body and strolled over to the thermostat.

“It's freezing in here. Why didn't you turn up the heat?”

“I wanted it to be like I had never been here,” I said.

“Interesting,” she said as she cranked up the thermostat.

I could hear the boiler kicking on in the basement, sending vibrations through the entire house, matching the thrumming of my nerves.

I was standing aimlessly in the middle of the room. These days I saw every challenge in the form of a map, my mind traveling different routes to find my way out. With Gina, I kept hitting dead ends.

“Sit down,” she said. “You're making me nervous.”

I sat on the couch.

“I'm surprised you don't have hypothermia,” she said.

I was cold. But it was always warmer than the camp. And the Fraziers had hot water.

“I was fine,” I said.

Gina kicked off her shoes and curled up on the other end of the couch. She looked at me again, tilting her head at different angles.

“You look different. I guess it's the haircut,” she said.

She had seen this Paige before, I guessed. I was fairly certain that if she turned on an overhead light, she'd know immediately that I was a fraud. I tried to modulate my expression, but I had so many other things to keep in mind, like gathering my cash and my keys and making a run for it, that I doubt I had much control over my facial muscles. I must have looked confused, because she clarified.

“I made him show me a picture once. Your hair was long.”

I'd gotten pretty solid at being anyone other than myself, but Paige was proving more difficult than the others. Who was Paige?

“I cut it,” I said.

“You sure did,” Gina said knowingly. “Women do very strange things over men.”

“I was drunk,” I said.

“Ah,” she said.

Gina spotted the family photo facedown on the mantel. She got up from the couch and righted it. She sat down, lifted her eyes to mine, and gave me an inscrutable gaze. I turned away.